Fame from Taine

One wonders why some people persist in fruitless pursuits, particularly radio/television personalities Aunty Culture and Shorn Sanctity. Sure, it’s mostly the money, millions for spouting conservative narrative aimed at managing every aspect of your life. Often they’re already nazis driven to dominate, shored up by minority patronizing, personal moralizing, and reality programming. Wise to ignore, or laugh off. Wiser still to analyze their meanness of spirit and comprehend how it divides to conquer. When you choose such a road to perdition, ride gets bumpy and swarm you’ve wronged inevitably turn warm against you. No excuse of, “Done for your betterment,” justifies urging hate crimes against holders of harmless differences in opinions, including religions, in a free society.

In ancient times leaders would take emissaries of enemies seriously, when totally incensed, throw them into a bottomless pit or toss into cages with hungry beasts for sport. Reasonable people struggle with the burdens of fairness, proof, and sense of guilt for commissions, omissions, and indecisions. Not so these discreditable egomaniacs with a sole purpose: Evil. The more you join their fight and lash out unreasonably, the richer and safer you make them feel, and worse off both they’ll and you’ll be. MAGA fattens egoes and feeds maggots. Because it’s so much harder to make compromises and meld productively, they’d rather take easy route, talk against community, thin the herd rather than herd cats beyond their control, and wind up on top of a miserably diminished pile suited to their ignorance and impotence.

Smart people see how everyone doing well eases own success, not sharing crumbs with slaves and stashing hoards, which instead devalues wealth and shoots self in foot. Sets a terrible precedent, too, this model of self worth based on capital secured, never enough. Promotes all sorts of crime. Conquistadors stole from indigenous cultures, pirates stole from them, and sea sank both their vessels for today's treasure seekers until state steps in and takes it away for billionaires to confiscate and politicians to misappropriate. This vicious circle ends when you decide so and say no.

Managers promise less friction, more smoothness. Without friction, wheels just spin and progress can’t begin. Adverbs cause friction in sentences. Certain authors hate them, but they qualify and quantify verbs, and reveal areas of gray that betray lies of absolutes and extremes, mostly. Science wants to be definitive, since nature heaps alternatives, disasters, and exceptions with inexhaustible superfluity on best designed plans and schemes. As soon as you’ve concluded your analysis bottom falls out of box you’ve locked it all in. Gravity and hooks catch and dump everything into ocean’s depths.

These facts in mind, can you say conservatism serves any purpose whatsoever? At minimum, nonstop nature of their message raises questions about its purpose. Does remain a reminder of the nadir to which civilization can sink without lawful cooperation and successful community. Gives a context to why corruption, depression, suicide, and widespread injustice prevail. Explains why such essential elements to a whole society as art and science went down toilet replaced by pointless greed and thoughtless inequality. Should public allow airwaves to be blasted with its propaganda and every discussion rounded to include? You’ll notice lately a lot more time bought on PBS for conservatives to toss in 2 cents that tries to persuade liberally minded to relax and relent sensible arguments that skewer its petty insecurities and underlying deceit. Saavy people don’t surrender freedoms and rights so readily.

Resembles cycling competitions that pit self and teams against rivals in field. There will always be some anatomical superior, who may have an off day and let you win. What does it prove? That all your intense training was not a total waste? Bike commuters do notice when lapses in conditioning occur, result in harder climbs and minutes lost into wind, though neither matters much, since time averages out over number of trips. Always arrive earlier than expected anyway, as is the case with most things, especially the unexpected.

While worthwhile destinations seem distant, tragedy will forever hurry toward you however well you prepare. No upside to inviting calamity by supporting collide avowed by some reactionary. Labann doesn’t expect you to heed, get paid to warn, hope for a payday, or look for recognition, though still can’t be trusted. Why persist, indeed?

Takes enormous repeated effort to restore balance and resurrect equality which all need. When you do, you share fate of natural historian and revolutionary critic Hippolyte Taine (1828 – 1893), who influenced Émile Zola and other famous French authors, but despite precise commentary and scientific approach got disavowed roundly as simultaneously too conservative and too liberal. Made him incorruptible, therefore intolerable. Finding truth forever condemns the finder and favors fortunate exploiter.

“There are causes [race, milieu and moment] for ambition, courage, truth, just as there are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. Vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar... I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.” Hippolyte Taine

Was Lois Lane?

As much as you’d like to believe you live in an insular world among those whom you allow access and your own mind, you’re no island unto yourself. Reports of external origin rattling around your cranium trigger neural responses, so you inflict pain upon self despite instinctual pleasure principle. Your “committee of me” will forever be beset by plurality, in the sense, rule by dominant minority. Whatever coalition follows through gains status and gets to tell those they’ve divided what to do, whether or not you want to. It’s how a bajillion inexplicable laws began, each framed against you and for them.

You can never behave freely by your own design, even if that would best serve your interests, or resign to get off grid entirely. Might as well amass facts, report issues, and shame blameworthy. Messages to forgive self and seek comforts in consumerism hold appeal, though only happiness you’ll ever possess comes from helping those who have less. Grabbers and harassers later regret transgressions once plurality comes full circle. You can’t outrun evil you do forever. Desires among those you deprive drive a desperate divide from which you can’t hide.

Don’t expect Clark Kent or Lois Lane to settle score; step up yourself or suffer losses. Heroic alien and maverick scout, neither met dealings so corrupt that journalism itself lost clout. Lois was never taken seriously, even as a fictional character, too slow to recognize Clark was Superman in disguise. Neither will you be, despite jumping through hoops of logic online like a nazi corgi until you break free. Must have patience, neither succumb to fatigue nor try to match blitzkrieg of agitprop traitors, drug dealers, tax collectors, and weather tormentors through April Fool’s, Albert's Bicycle, Fees Due, and Frost Free Days.

Late liberal activist/actress Margot Kidder (1948 - 2018) played Lady Liberty on a bike much later than Lois Lane (1978) opposite crippled rider Christopher Reeve, both victims of Superman Curse along with humorless übermensch originator Friedrich Nietzsche, who died of syphilis in 1900.

Don't know what the mean planetary biological speed per capita might be. Can’t imagine it was ever estimated. Algae, bacteria, fungi, plant life forms, single celled organisms, and viruses only coast along with medium, don’t individually propel themselves, or simply stay put, but when factored in would astronomically slow rate overall, since they account for largest biomass on planet. Oceans account for 80% of life on Earth. Amoeba, certain bugs, paramecium, and the like move very slowly. Entomologists estimate 10 quadrillion individual insects, many ants and beetles, though numbers and species are disappearing at an alarming rate. Inchworms and snails seem speedy versus an average thus derived.

By the time you move up food chain to birds, lizards, and vertebrates excluding humans, you get bursts up to 70 mph (cheetah) on land, and 150 mph (peregrine falcon) in aerial dive. Despite this range, 0 to 150 mph, averaged among a quintillion organisms, mean probably wouldn’t exceed one inch per hour, about 0.0000158 mph.

Riding at 11.0000000 mph, average among planet’s one billion bicyclists given bad roads and steep hills, you notice rust breasted robins and some flying insects match your speed, pass you outright, and remind it’s time to wash off winter and wax your steel steed. Competing with drivers up to 5 times faster, same creatures become road kill and windshield splat. Without motors, bicyclists go as fast as dogs, horses or other organisms, so move harmlessly amidst nature and stay ecologically safe in contrast.

Your walking gait, a mere 3 mph, makes for an easy target. Bicycling multiplies that between 3 to 11 times, so closer to overall motoring speed of 25 mph, given traffic competition and controls in cities. Racing on empty highways tops out at 60 times faster, though land speed record under highly controlled conditions is currently Mach 1.02, ~763 mph. Aviation lifts off where salt flat limits, then rises beyond Mach 5, where space flight launches up to escape velocity, ~25,000 mph, 7 miles/second, the top speed any human has ever travelled. In practicality, to reach another planet would take at least 10 times that. Solar wind, should you successfully harness it, would do at 1,000,000 mph. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reached 433,000 mph. Solar power has its uses after all; panels and windmills don’t cause cancer, but petroleum fuels surely do, in fact, its chief cause alongside cars, cigarettes and coal.

One could factor in how Earth rotates at 1,000 mph, shelters all known life as it chases and circles sun at 67,000 mph, a star among vigintillion visible, while Milky Way whizzes along at 515,000 mph dragging our outlying solar system with it. Space makes human speed records sound ridiculously impotent. People ought to recognize deceit and graft as fast as a synapse, but stare through betrayal and treachery on a galactic scale as if it doesn’t do damage daily. What begs acceleration are instances of insight and revelation.

Buzz of engines and hiss of tires threaten violence to bicyclists pedaling slowly in relative silence. Even worse, trucks drag chains, a reckless habit which apparently causes wildfires according to US Forest Service, though probably not as many as flicking lit cigarette butts out car windows. Thoughtless behaviors a root cause, who considers consequences of billions of dollars in lumber lost, carbon released to atmosphere, firefighter deaths, habitat destruction, and species extinctions? Automotive convenience and impatience not only kill, but result in net losses over hours gained. Are you willing to pay big and risk lives just to avoid an earlier start? What’s your hurry?

Nation’s sixty million cyclists ought to unify against automotive plurality. Rude drivers edge pass then squeeze against curb to keep cyclists from passing them, as if saying, “If I can’t go, neither can you.” Race past to sit in next traffic knot, yet worry about having a cyclist ahead? Bicyclists are never in your way, virtually never injure anyone except selves. Just the opposite, motorists are road hogs and sole threat to all other road users. They chose a wide conveyance that creates its own obstacles, unlike shoulder-width cyclists who’ve sacrificed speed for slip through sweet deliverance. Says something about disrespect for code designed to protect, not restrict, bodies who propel self. Instead, pass cars on left, or use sidewalk when necessary. Horsepower corrupts; horse's asses in high performance hot rods, transportation aberrations, have been corrupted absolutely.

Focus is on blame whenever a writer uses “you”. “We” means “I” assume some of your culpability. When blameless, neither “I” nor “we” is appropriate. YOU ought to be harmless, drive right, repent ways, straighten up, take responsibility. All this precludes creeping along in passing lane, speeding past in slowest lane, and weaving across every lane. Road design and traffic flow set a narrow range of low/high limits; violators who endanger everyone drive as if inviolably entitled to sling an iron ton on one's own kamikaze run. Unwelcome automation tries to control such fools who abuse rules.

Society’s plea for political correctness, deeming no one blameless, instead enables offenders and sticks it to law abiders. Policies and regulations that defend right wing posturing yet hold professors and students hostage for imaginary hate speech and possible minority slurs serve conservatives to discredit reporters, restrict individuals, and stifle opposition. Movements can be impeded but not stopped. Speed of change matches how many and much state oppresses.

Incompetents think their demands exist in a vacuum, unaffected by rat race of rival requests. For your part, to fulfill duties with efficient skill has never been enough or even sensible. You're supposed to absorb abuse, shut up, suck up, and take no credit. You, lowly serf with eyes averted, ask for nothing, die on cue, and provide those of higher status with a human shield or spare body parts. Whose wet dream do you serve? Go home, eat dinner, police own yard of debris from neighbor's neglected dump, and prepare for another day of indentured drudgery. Neither refuse to give blood nor stop for lunch, because a thousand applicants with no clue want your spot though you’re drained of blood, sweat and tears a lot.

Setting an efficient precedent condemns self to a personal hell, limits chances of help, sanctions them to drive you until burn out, and satisfies their schadenfreude while you sizzle and squirm under undeserved pressure. Your abilities, achievements, client relationships, job training, and track record are meaningless to bosses who possess none. You're a headcount filler, salary liability, short timer, substitute performer until nephew finishes school. When you handle every emergency and impossible deadline, you perturb managers, who set you up to fail and want you to quit once crushed so avoid pittance of unemployment insurance.

Speed - key to a profane trinity including price and quality - meets everyone's baseline but yours. Yet clients must forfeit one, never get all three, so cheap garbage and sloppy pretexts prevail. Haste leads directly to fatalities, injuries, losses, and waste, but who cares as long as profits accrue? Mankind’s future and your wellbeing don't matter. Leaders debate why planes crash and suicides occur, justify expressways and plutocracies, and lavish taxes they collect from you on privileges in which you’ll never participate. Those they hurry, prod and whip get ever further behind until crises climax, heads roll, and innocents get blamed. When camel they rode pell mell dies in center of desert, so will they; small compensation, some might say.

“We can roll all night. Oh, Slow Ride. Take it easy. Slow down, go down, got to get your lovin' one more time. Hold me, roll me, slow ridin' woman, you're so fine... Slow ride, easy.” - Dave Peverett, Foghat, Fool for the City (1975)

Last Dance with Mary Jane

Bike commuters cover serious miles. Hundred-mile weeks provide plenty of time to play with words, plow through ideas, and wonder how many more trips a body nearing eighth decade alive can survive before it just won’t go no mo'. Riding before dawn, Labann feels blessed to do what few care or dare to, but has surely earned right to complain that just past next hill crest or horizon test might be the last dance on bike and chain.

Maillot Jaune (pron. mahjo zhawn), now and then corrupted as Mary Jane, Tour de France’s yellow jersey worn exclusively by individual time leader, viably excuses Labann's preference for reflex yellow as a color to admire and wear. Also highly visible under all conditions, it’s what they paint caution signs, fire trucks, and school busses. Plus it signifies curiosity and fear, enlightenment and peril, races and taboos, yang and yin under the pale primrose sun, yeah, a potent talisman. To survive, you should make it as difficult as possible for motorists to collide with you, use a blazing headlight, blinking Lanterne Rouge, reflecting fields or stripes at night. Or not: Stealthy routes or total avoidance also work. Can share tactics to try, never demand that others must comply. Recreational and sportif cyclists don’t necessarily confront same set of issues that transportational riders do.

Pluralism: Look it up! Pluralism fuels a powerful economic engine from dozens of different approaches, heeds unusual threats, rounds out varied contingencies, and swells revenue for defense, since needs indubitably vary without uniformity. The reason 20th became known as The American Century can be summed up by nation's ability to aid every ally and avoid war on its shore. That was without neutrality, mind you. And to what do you attribute this unprecedented status? Surely not just an ocean obstacle. Some would argue it was a melding of many customs, skills and viewpoints. Since science cannot define every fact, opinions remain highly debatable, even rejectable. Diversity for its own sake is daft; rather assemble exceptional talents to meet unforeseen demands without bias blinders, class distinctions, creed casteism, gender defenders, or racial recriminations. Or else you can give folks a chance and have faith they won’t disappoint. Science says you’ll choose correctly 3:1. Life’s a gamble at best.

Today's Americans are dissatisfied with how government is run, which engages in billion-dollar-a-day wars that cause widespread civilian suffering, favors rich, and reneges on agreements, entitlements, and promises. Three branches are made up of five hundred and forty-six members, with token exceptions, wealthy white males. One can trace all recent domestic terrorism directly back to attitudes that leaders leak, Fox agitprop, and Trump on stump. Arrogance and avarice made apparent, such enemies recklessly make more enemies for you. Meanwhile, they demand heightened internal security, tightened law enforcement, and whitened brain bleachery. It's exactly how totalitarianism implants itself, by expanding threats and forcing everyone to act or be alike, not better, just enough to ensure fear, manipulation and silence. Must everyone and everything else be eliminated? Inability to deal with variety is a defining symptom of mental instability.

You'd think Christian forbearance would preclude silent acceptance of murder or slavery as a solution. Bible thumpers cite good book - merely a history of an ancient obscure tribe - as a compliance cudgel, though constitution encompasses a wide range from atheists to zealots, thereby requiring separation of religion and state. Extreme right narrative, “We are few, but we have facts, so only we can set state straight,” which then proceeds to pepper hate speech with 5% of science used to conflate 95% self serving opinion, would be laughable, even pitiable, if it didn’t entertain genocide. Worst of all sins is to start a war and justify it under God’s will, as if any human could ever speak authoritatively on behalf of an invisible, omniscient power. Many a crusader defending Christ posthumously slaughtered innocents in diametric disobedience of His teachings. Where were they when He was being crucified by Old Testament's authors?

Confessors divulge whatever best suits them, put a positive spin on shortcomings, stack deck toward their saintly legacies. Who wants to be remembered as a boot licker, corporate chump, money grubber, servile stooge, system minion, or total loser? You're a rebel Jedi warrior, but only in your own delusional mind if you've consistently dismissed doing heroic deeds against evil empires that would qualify as outstanding. By living long, you’re largely a detriment, unless you've restored more than you ruined. Most can’t even claim carbon neutrality, never mind net contributions or improvements. Consider species extinctions, desert wastelands, habitat destructions, toxic fields, and water pollution for which only humans can be blamed. How many really exceptional individuals will it take to overcome adverse effects of seven billion incompetents who instead preen an appearance or stand by stupidly?

Despite courts, who supposedly serve public's best interests alone, no small group or sole individual should presume to judge what others do. All one has ever been allowed is to act responsibly: Do no harm, refuse no one in need. Few ever meet this minimum requisite. Since no two bodies occupy same place at same time, everyone experiences own life and follows different paths. This can be both good and too bad. Empathy is a supremely important virtue, one neither readily acquired from privilege nor valued by most until a lack of any personally affects them. Without, freedom and justice aren’t possible in a nation with highest percentage of population incarcerated. Leaders and media shouldn’t be inciting hate crimes unless prepared themselves to die or do time. Public’s has a duty to prosecute offenders and remediate mess.

It occurs to Labann on mornings when he passes state’s prison that being able to bike about will forever beat staring out from behind bars or staying in bedridden. Then, again, from bicycling there’s an aftermath of forbidden murmurs and foxtrot twitches from dodging pavement impediments any bicyclist must bear.

Is every crutch now legal - booze, guns, motor vehicles, narcotics, prostitution, weed - at the cost of core freedoms - from tyranny and want, unafraid to present another perspective, unashamed to reason aloud, unmolested by religious bigotry? Amidst political imbalance and war of words destined for worse, there’s plenty to resolve, but does this effort require you? Who slept though only to awake and find hard fought rights eroded beyond recovery? Can never stop. To maintain your way of life, you must make it as difficult as possible for any apathetic imbeciles or April Fool to rule.

"Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain. I feel summer creepin' in and I'm tired of this town again. Well, I don't know, but I've been told, ‘You never slow down, you never grow old.’“ - Thomas Earl Petty (1993)